China takes a massive step towards accountability

The Chinese authorities have compensated the mother of a youth who died after being beaten in police custody during the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, in the first known payment of its kind. A human rights activist said yesterday that police in Chengdu had reportedly paid 70,000 yuan (£4,800) as “hardship assistance” to Tang Deying, who has campaigned for 17 years for an official apology and redress for the death of her son.

It is unlikely that this will lead to a mass-compensation pay out to the families of the other victims, or any official apology for the event. But it’s a start, and one that this Shanghaiist never thought he’d see.Ding Zilin, the most prominent of a group of “Tiananmen mothers” said: “This case shows that it has been useless for the Chinese government to say that the Tiananmen incident is in the past. To the Chinese people, this event is not in the past at all.”